This week the infinitely talented Claire Kurylowski takes us to the haunting location for her film HONOR,of which we have said, “HONOR is an ode to French filmmaker Alain Resnais, specifically his 1961 film, Last Year at Marienbad, as well the opulent fashion designs of Madame Gres of the 1940s. HONOR poignantly follows two characters impeccably dressed in bespoke Berlin designs and is set against an equally majestic backdrop of a Baroque-esque location.”

Now we’re lucky enough to have Claire take us behind the scenes, and talk us through the epic, sprawling, cinematic location of her beautiful film…

Why: “With HONOR I paid some small but perhaps overt tributes to Alain Resnais’ L’année Dernière à Marienbad (1961), wrangling the most opulent backdrops we could find, creating painterly tableaux compositions with them. The Baroque milieu became a visual motif of the aggrandized love story ; everything elevated to a point of rich beauty. In this regard the locations became a character themselves to be noticed. I liked the idea that the Baroque locations seemed so fixed, that they hold a permanence, their grandeur eternally cast in stone. The protagonist’s recapitulations, hold the same desires that her love too could have held a permanence, this is then belied by the narrative melancholic course.”

How: “I had already visited the palaces before as a tourist! However credit is due to Jannis Birsner our locations manager and Lucie Tamborini our producer who then made it possible to make arrangements that we could shoot at this location on a day when it wasn’t so busy. It felt quite luxurious as though the palace was ours for the day! The interior has since been modernised so we shot our interiors at the Friedrichsfelde Chateau (see page 4).”

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